Steampunk Silhouette Fairy

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! Uh oh it's Friday the 13th today so I'll be touching wood and encouraging my fur baby Jinx to run in front of me (but not trip me up like he usually does!) as he's a black cat and considered lucky in the UK. With a bit of luck and avoidance of going ANYWHERE I should be ok lol. In all honesty I'm not that superstitious and the only reason I'll be staying indoors is because we're expecting a parcel today. I've had a sleepless night - it was just one of those times when my brain wouldn't switch off long enough for me to fall asleep - so I pulled an all nighter and did a bit of crafting. I coloured in a Kaisercraft stamped image from the "Suga Pop" range which features a couple of cutesy owls (I love owls) but I haven't bothered to take a photo as it was just ProMarker practice. However I have taken a few pics of a steampunk fairy picture I've made for my sister. 

Steampunk silhouette fairy with metal/card gears and butterfly

 Regular readers of this blog will notice that this is an old favourite of mine in fact I made my sister a card using this image for her birthday last December and she liked it so much that when I offered to make her one in the colours of her choice, she jumped at it. Teresa asked me to make her a picture (for framing) using lilacs and purples so I hope she likes what I've made for her. I started off with a 5.5" square piece of cream card (I used cream because I have loads but prefer to use white card stock for toppers and card bases and for this project the original colour is covered with distress inks) and I covered it with Seedless Preserve Distress ink using a blending tool then I went round the edges towards the centre but leaving a space with Dusty Concorde. I blended both inks together until I got a smooth finish as desired. I stamped the fairy image using Memento Tuxedo Black ink but carefully wiped away the central parts (the veins) of the wings so that I could stamp them with cogs and gears. I also stamped the star dust and mushrooms at this point. My Wink of Stella brush pen is nearly out of ink so after swiping it over the steampunked wings I got a new WOS pen out and prepped it, unfortunately I squeezed a little too vigorously and too much ink came out. Although it's called clear the fluid which the shimmer is suspended in actually has a silver tint to it and as too much liquid came out of the brush tip, my wings ended up silvery instead of it having a bleaching effect on the Distress inks as it usually does. I don't mind too much though because although it almost obscures the cogs and gears etc that I stamped if you move the panel to a different angle you can see them through the shimmer which gives them an ethereal appearance - I imagine a steampunk fairy's wings to be half clockwork and half magic. The solid fairy image didn't stamp as dark as I would have liked so I went over it with a black WOS brush marker. I covered the mushroom caps with a layer of clear WOS and added splodges of it to the star dust sprinkles. I added some silhouetted flowers and leaves from a Lindsay Mason stamp set as shown. Once I was happy with this image I layered it onto black card stock then onto purple/lilac holographic card. I cut a sheet of lilac shimmer card that came from Crafter's Companion (I won it a few years ago in a card making competition with some stamps, rock-a-blocks and spray and stick) to 7 1/4" square and layered this underneath the holographic card. Finally I cut a sheet of dark purple ribbed card to 8" square and added the fairy layered topper to the centre. 

Close up of "Steampunked" wings

Slightly different angle showing steampunk fairy

The pictures above show the ethereal cogs and gears in the fairy's wings. To highlight the steampunk elements of the fairy I decided to add some metal embellishments to the finished piece. I usually add a butterfly rub-on to this image but instead added a metal butterfly using a Dovecrafts 'Metallics' mini brad (I punched a small hole through all the layers first using a WRMK crop-a-dile hole punch) I bent the wings up slightly to add interest to the butterfly. I got a cogs and gears die set from ECAP a while back and used them to cut out card shapes which I either painted with copper Cosmic Shimmer paints (absolutely love these paints!) or I covered them with Versamark ink and double embossed them using silver and copper embossing powders. I'm really pleased with how my homemade cogs and gears turned out because the embossed ones are on par with the metal bought ones. I got a selection of made and bought cogs and gears and added them to the bottom right of the panel using different sized brads - I've even found some Woodware screw top brads which look very steampunky! With the exception of the second from the top cog, the gears and cogs can be moved but unfortunately they don't really move each other - I'm going to frame this eventually so having moving parts isn't exactly a priority.

Guess which gears and cogs are the metal ones?

The clue is the screw brads *grin*

Another angle - the wings are now silver!

I hope you've enjoyed this project, I shall be on the look out for a suitable frame (a box frame would be good) and once it's framed I'll add a finished project photo to this post. I really hope my sister likes it too. As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the box below and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxxx

New Driver Card and haul from Every Craft's A Pound

Hello crafty peeps, welcome to my crafty nook! I can't believe it's already a week since my last post - I don't know where the time's gone. I hope you are all well and have something fun planned for the weekend -my plan is to hibernate or just hide in my crudy lol. I'm still (yes STILL!) sorting my crudy out and I've finally put away some Christmas stuff that got left on my desk after making Christmas cards last year, I thought I'd put it all away put I think it hides when I'm not looking. Because my crudy is very small I tend to have boxes stacked on top of each other and I don't have any work surfaces clear (when I'm crafting my free space is about the size of an A4 sheet of paper and when I use my trimmer it hangs off the edge of the desk) so I have to balance everything on my hip or on the floor when I'm tidying my stash (not much clear space there either) which makes putting things away turn into quite a production. Plus I'm a bit idle.

I literally have an A4 sheet of paper worth of space!

Just like last week I have my little crafty helper keeping an eye on things as I blog but instead of sitting on my head he's curled up on the pull out shelf of the computer desk - it's really sweet and he's keeping my wrists warm as they are resting on him! Only problem is I keep having to stop typing every couple of lines or so as Jinx gets fidgety if I don't stroke him regularly. Small price to pay to have a contented cat.

Passion for ProMarkers Blog Challenge week 280 - New Beginnings

New Driver card entry 

Click here to join in: promarkerchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/week-280-new-beginnings.html

As always I'm doing the Passion for ProMarkers Blog Challenge which is called "New Beginnings", I've started this project three times so far, the first two attempts were for Shhh Baby Asleep Door signs as I wanted to do something a bit different than a baby card but I ended up scrapping them as I couldn't get them to look the way I had them in my head. Then I decided to do a car themed card as my nephew is taking his driving test soon and it would be good to have a card with a purpose this week. I've had two orders from "Every Craft's A Pound" this year and ECAP has started giving away a free gift with every order - stamps this time round. The first free stamp set I got was called Vroom Vroom and has a sleek sports car as it's main image and the second stamp set I got free was called Beep Beep and has the front grill of a car with number plate style greetings to stamp in the empty registration plate. I stamped the sports car out and coloured it with red poppy and red ProMarker but couldn't get it to look shiny so I decided to cheat and coated it with some Dovecraft clear 3D pearl effects (it's a bit like a clear raised glue or Glossy Accents and is AMAZING for sticking sequins to projects - once it dries those suckers won't shift!) unfortunately it dried streaky as I didn't put an even amount on the car. Stupidly I was being a bit stingy with it as I only have one bottle (did the same with Glossy Accents, never used it as it was nearly a fiver for a bottle and now it's gone yellow!) which is really daft as it only cost £1 in the first place (will definitely be buying more bottles assuming ECAP still sell it when I place my next order). So I scrapped that idea and instead settled on a cute Mini car image from a stamp set called "New Beginnings". I stamped the image onto a panel of white card stock towards the left hand side of the card using Memento Tuxedo Black ink then masked off the area above the bonnet using a heart shaped post it note (bonnet and post it note both curve slightly) and stamped a flower half on the bonnet in the same ink, then I stamped a different flower on the door of the Mini. Both stamps came from a set I got free from Crafts Beautiful magazine in 2011 which featured cupcakes and flowers. The wheels of the car were a little patchy so I stamped them again on a spare piece of card and fussy cut round them. I coloured all images using ProMarkers then stamped some hearts (stamp used from "Scientifically Speaking - Clearly Besotted) in red ink behind the back of the car so it looks like they are coming out of the exhaust and stamped more flowers using black ink which I then coloured in. I added a black road using Black Wink of Stella which I also added to the re-stamped wheels. The door handle, bumpers, wing mirror base and trim around the headlight were coloured in using ProMarkers Metallic silver marker. I added clear Wink of Stella to the windows, flowers and lights of the image. I added the new wheels using sticky foam tape so they are slightly raised on the car. I coloured the sky using Dovecraft Brights chalks then stamped W3LL DON3 from the Beep Beep stamp set and punched out a star from glitter card which I added to just under the sentiment. I glued some sequins onto the hearts and flower exhaust plume using the Dovecraft clear Pearl Effects. Once the sequins where dry I mounted the panel onto corrugated silver card and then matted it onto black card.  I made a card blank using tie dyed card from DCWV which I think ties in nicely to the hippy style of the mini.

Close up of topper

This car is probably a bit girly for my nephew but I couldn't resist making it pink and flowery. It's taken me a lot longer than usual to make a card for this challenge after all my false starts but I'm rather pleased with how it's turned out.

Haul from Every Craft's A Pound

I couldn't resist putting in an order to ECAP after I saw all the lovely Steampunk themed metal embellishments. I've just taken a photo of the complete box of goodies as many of them are multiples of the same thing - the quality is poorer than usual and I can't take another as I've put everything away so please bare with me. My order included Papermania Chronology Clock Faces, Cogs, Keys, book plates and clock hands though they are more like game spinners than hands. Four Urban background stamps (Chronology again) three bottles of Dovecraft 3D pearl effect in black, silver and cream and an embossing folder called Diamond Frame which matches the Docraft Art Deco release from last year. My final item was the free stamp set mentioned above. Check out the latest deals at ECAP here: www.everycraftsapound.co.uk - there are loads of Crafters' Companion goodies just in.

I hope you've enjoyed sharing my card and haul from ECAP. As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them below or in the comments form in the sidebar. I have a birthday card to make this weekend for Isobel's daddy which I'll post once I've made it (unless it's too hideous to share!) so until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx